OVERVIEW
SAT or the Scholastic Aptitude Test is an especially designed university/college entrance exam required to be taken by aspirants desiring to enroll in an undergraduate program globally. The test aims to provide colleges and universities with a common admitting criteria and assesses student’s competence in critical reading, writing and mathematics.
SAT is owned, created and published by College Board and administered by Educational Testing Service on behalf of College Board.
The test is taken worldwide and is available 7 times in a year. Usually the students take SAT when they are in their high school’s junior year to keep time for re-takes.
FORMAT
The test measures the college readiness of students and aims at assessing student’s intelligence and reasoning abilities.
SAT is divided into two main sections:
- Evidence based Reading and Writing
- Mathematics
These sections are further divided into four sub sections of Reading, Writing, math with calculator and math without calculator. SAT also offers an optional 50-minutes essay. All the four earlier mentioned sections are based on multiple choice questions. The entire test is 3 hours long.
MARKING CRITERIA
Each of the two sections are individually marked out of 800 and the overall score is an average of both main sections. Overall score is marked using a point scale of 400-1600.
The individual scores are based on raw scores which is simply the number of questions you correctly attempt in sub sections of the test. The questions you skip or attempt wrong are not marked because there is no negative marking.
The scores are further explained in the picture below.
RESULTS
Sat scores are usually available after 13-15 days of the test. If essay is also taken as a part of the test results are delayed 3- 4 days.
SAT results are valid for 3 years.
